Friday, October 15, 2010

Quick Hits #11

1.Lead10 last weekend was tremendous. I was very encouraged by the fellowship among the brethren there, and moreso by the gospel passion brewing there. The place was brimming with men and women interested in leading churches in New England to gospel-centrality. Bob Thune and Bill Streger did a killer job with their talks. Bob's plea for church planting was so important and so inspiring. I was very pleased with Bill's work too, and his approach (and content) was a perfect fit for the New England pastoral crowd. Both of my breakouts were well received, and for that I'm grateful. My favorite part was getting to meet new folks between sessions and over meals. I made some new friends and found some brothers in mission. Here is a post from Bob reflecting on the conference.

2. Randy Moss to Vikings, eh? Not impressed.

3. Anthony Bradley responded to my response. He expresses incredulity at the length of my piece. It's an overreaction, he suggests. This is the last thing I will say about this dispute because it became "vain" rather quickly, but after his 3 blog posts, multiple long comments, and multiple tweets on the subject, I'm not sure I'm the one who had the nerve touched. Just sayin'.

4. Apparently I have moved up a few notches and am now the #99 "church blog" on the interwebs. That's with the erroneous info that I had zero visitors in the month of August, though, so who knows where GDC really lands. In any event, thank you for reading and linking and subscribing, and brand new thanks to new readers who are beginning to follow me over from Twitter. (At least Church Relevance doesn't factor in Technorati rankings any more; I could never get them to recognize my blog even existed.)

5. I finished writing Gospel Wakefulness this week. Felt good sending it off to Crossway. It releases next year on Reformation Day (Oct. 31). I really hope it blesses whoever finds it in their hands. Here's the last excerpt I'll share for a while:

If we do not become fixated on the vision of Jesus and his finished work, we will be free to fixate on things that don’t save. Even if this were to happen in a church and concentrate on churchy things, it would still be idolatry. And even shiny things in the churches, compared to Christ, are dull. Major Ian Thomas says, “I know of nothing quite so boring as Christianity without Christ.” But like the church-shopping woman I mentioned in the previous chapter, there are plenty of people interested in a Christianity beyond Christ.

When we look to Christ’s power for our justification but not our sanctification, we deny the only true power for enduring change. If Jesus is the image we aspire to, as individual Christians and as the Body of Christ, we must continue to look to him again and again, more and more.

It’s night. You don’t want to disturb anyone who is sleeping. Have you ever clicked a light on in a dark room just long enough to get your bearings, then clicked it back off, trusting that brief vision as memory enough to make it across the room without knocking something over? Isn’t it better to just leave the light on?

6. Whatever you think of NBC's "Community" isn't it something special that Chevy Chase has finally stuffed his ego and is doing character work in an ensemble?